The premise of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is that you’re a pirate who gets pulled into a secret war between the Templars and Assassins. You’re shipwrecked with a crazy man who tries to strike a deal with you and who then tries to kill you. When his plan doesn’t work — you kill him instead — you take a rare item he needed to deliver to collect a reward yourself. You assume his identity and head towards the meeting spot for a drop off. From there, it quickly turns into a struggle for the fate of humanity. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

After the jump, what else is new?

The progress of Assassin’s Creed plots is a twisted mess of intrigue and science fiction that previously followed Desmond Miles’ journey through his ancestral DNA. This game, however, moves beyond Desmond. Instead, you’re navigating someone else’s DNA for an entertainment company called Abstergo Entertainment. Abstergo creates games from the DNA of different subjects the company has acquired. According to the fiction of Assassin’s Creed IV, their first big product was Assassin’s Creed: Liberation for the PS Vita. It’s all a sly meta wrapper for the series, mercifully free of Desmond Miles. For the modern day sequences, you don’t have to do any Tomb Raider exploration, which is about as wise a choice as getting rid of Desmond. Instead, you explore the workspace, hack cameras, solve puzzles, collect clues, and never once have to pretend you’re playing a shooter.

The previous games’ horseback treks are now swapped out for a wide world of oceangoing exploration. The Caribbean is lively with activity and dense with things to do. If you’re tired of playing missions, explore the multitude of little islands. You’ll find a variety of collectibles, including new shanties for your crew to sing. You can also do a bit of hunting for upgrades similar to the system in Far Cry 3. Your ship upgrades will take the lion’s share of your resources and attention, as this is very much a ship-centric game with hearty ship-to-ship combat that will make any Master and Commander fan proud.

As an overall package, Assassin’s Creed IV is the best in the series for how nearly everything has been tweaked, overhauled, and completely rethought. With one exception: the melee. In the day of Batman, Bayonetta, and a rebooted Devil May Cry, there’s no excuse for this uninteresting combat. It’s simplistic, unruly, and never takes more than the same recurring two-button combo. It works, but that’s simply not enough compared to the attention lavished on everything else. Wonky combat aside, Assassin’s Creed IV is a hell of a game. Instead of building giant cities separated by little patches of open land, you have here a massive ocean peppered with islands that include small to mid-sized cities, forming a Carribben setting that oozes character. Never has a game delivered on the promise of living the life of a pirate as well as Black Flag with its awesome production values, refined game design, and lively oceangoing hijinx.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

Xbox 360

A BRASH REBEL ASSASSIN Become Edward Kenway, a charismatic yet brutal pirate captain, trained by Assassins. Edward can effortlessly switch between the Hidden Blade of the Assassin's Order and all new weaponry including four flintlock pistols and dual cutlass swords. EXPLORE AN OPEN WORLD FILLED WITH OPPORTUNITIES Discover the most diverse Assassin's Creed world ever created. From Kingston to Nassau, explore 50 unique locations where you can live the life of a pirate including: Loot underwater shipwrecks Assassinate enemies in blossoming cities Hunt for rare animals in untamed jungles Search for treasure in lost ruins Escape to hidden coves BECOME THE MOST FEARED PIRATE IN THE CARIBBEAN Command your ship, the Jackdaw, and strike fear in all who see her. IT WAS NOT OUR IDEA TO WRITE THOSE BITS UP THERE IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Ubisoft did that.

I have a serious right brain/left brain thing going on with AC4. Or maybe it’s just schizophrenia? Probably just hungry. Anyway, it’s a great game that has so many things that strike me as odd, and can’t quite ditch the uninteresting things that weren’t that great even back in the first game. I like that they ask for my rating after missions, so I can tell somebody (assuming it’s not just going straight to someone’s garbage bin) how little I care about eavesdropping missions. Even the seafaring, which is the best part of the game, bothers me a bit in how they adhere just enough to reality to make it almost like sailing, but streamline so much that the Jackdaw may as well be a very large car. You can sail directly into the wind! A little slower, sure, but neat trick. I’m also amused that with each passing game, the eternal struggle between Assassins and Templars seems less epic and more like a petty feud. Eventually we’ll probably get Assassin’s Creed: Hatfields and McCoys, I imagine.

drew

I thought that the ending of AC3 did a great job of hammering home the idea that Assassin’s vs Templars was a petty feud. As far as I can tell, that’s the whole idea.

Pogue Mahone

A valid point, but in AC4 we finally have a protagonist who’s as uninterested in the continuing struggle as I am. So I’ll add an extra half point to the letter grade for AC4’s score.

drew

A.5?

Pogue Mahone

You’re slightly more generous than I am. I’d go with more like, oh, I don’t know, B.9.

http://www.lamethrower.com JasonMcMaster

You know, I find that super fascinating that it isn’t 100% assassin all the time. I like how uninterested Kenway really is.

Pogue Mahone

I do too! It’s interesting to me that they actually made Kenway an opportunistic, you know, pirate. At every turn he’s being castigated by templars for having no overriding principles and by the assassins for having no conscience and Kenway’s reply is always the same – screw that, where’s my money?

I should point out that I haven’t completed the game though, and there’s plenty of time to turn Edward into a hooker with a heart of gold, or something.

tomchick

So many of the story missions are horrible, aren’t they? Which is really disappointing when you see what Volition does in Saints Row IV and what Rockstar does in GTA V. Those story missions are so good. Why can’t Ubisoft manage that? Frankly, I hated 90% of the storytelling in Black Flag, but like AC3, it was the stuff outside the story that pulled me through the game.

As for the sailing, I don’t think the world is ready for any sort of realistic sailing. Remember struggling your way to the west, upwind all the way, in Sid Meier’s Pirates? I can’t imagine other folks have the patience for that these days. Which is kind of a shame. I like the compressed arcade sailing in Black Flag, but I also wouldn’t have minded something a little less, well, actiony. But then the cannons start firing, the smoke rises up, I’m swinging from ropes to cut down the enemy captain, and all if forgiven.

Pogue Mahone

I’m not even really sure what I want here. I say I would like a little more realism but you’re right, I probably don’t really mean that. It’s just that they put some care and effort into certain aspects of the sailing game and, no doubt intentionally, just breezed over others that might very well step over the line from realism to tedium. I really dig the fleet mini game that lets you run trading routes, I kind of wish that was expanded a little more into an actual economy. I love setting up naval battles to protect those routes, too – I’ve got this one schooner I love to use because it can get in nearly three broadsides before anything but a gunboat can fire once.

I’m really enjoying this game but I can’t quite shake the feeling that it’s kind of a stew of things we’ve done in other AC games, not much new has been added. But then again, I always said I wanted a Master and Commander simulator and this may be as close as I ever get.

logat890

is this actually good? its getting good reviews from the usual gaming sites but I hear its more of the same shit from the past ones according to reader/user opinions. They’re also milking the naval combat w/c I think was overrated in AC3 anyway.

http://dougwykstra.wordpress.com/ wykstrad

Before I purchase this game, I have to finish Assassin’s Creed 3, which I bought partly on this website’s recommendation. And by “get through,” I mean “at least finish the tutorial, it supposedly gets better if you get through that and can remember all the elements of the game you’ve been trying to play for the last year.”

http://www.lamethrower.com JasonMcMaster

I fought through that part pretty hard. It was a chore, but I liked the payoff. AC4 is a lot quicker to the punch, though there’s a set up as well.

http://www.lamethrower.com JasonMcMaster

Naval combat has been streamlined a lot and feels a lot better in this game. It breaks up the city wandering segments with a good bit of swashbuckling so the pacing has somewhat changed. I like it a lot

Mercanis

It’s good to hear that the Assassin’s Creed franchise still has legs. Sea legs, apparently.

Corrections:
“it quickly turns into a struggle for [the] fate of humanity”
“Never has a game delivered on the promise of living the life of a pirate with [sic] as well as Black Flag”